cv::Mat to UIImage making image grayscale

edit

Whenever I convert a cv::Mat to a UIImage I get a grayscale image back, which is not what is in the original cv::Mat.

Here is the original cv::Mat:

After converting to UIImage:

Code for converting to UIImage

-(UIImage *)UIImageFromCVMat:(cv::Mat)cvMat
{
    NSData *data = [NSData dataWithBytes:cvMat.data length:cvMat.elemSize()*cvMat.total()];
    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace;

    if (cvMat.elemSize() == 1) {
        colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceGray();
    } else {
        colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    }

    CGDataProviderRef provider = CGDataProviderCreateWithCFData((__bridge CFDataRef)data);

    // Creating CGImage from cv::Mat
    CGImageRef imageRef = CGImageCreate(cvMat.cols,                                 //width
                                        cvMat.rows,                                 //height
                                        8,                                          //bits per component
                                        8 * cvMat.elemSize(),                       //bits per pixel
                                        cvMat.step[0],                            //bytesPerRow
                                        colorSpace,                                 //colorspace
                                        kCGImageAlphaNone|kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault,// bitmap info


                       provider,                                   //CGDataProviderRef
                                    NULL,                                       //decode
                                    false,                                      //should interpolate
                                    kCGRenderingIntentDefault                   //intent
                                    );


// Getting UIImage from CGImage
UIImage *finalImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
CGImageRelease(imageRef);
CGDataProviderRelease(provider);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

return finalImage;

}

Can anyone point out to me why when I convert it to a UIImage that I get back a gray scale image? I need it in a UIImage because I am sending it to tesseract, and the gray scale image does not give optimal OCR results.